Croatia awaits war crimes verdict

Ante Gotovina accused over ‘ethnic cleansing’ of 90,000 Serbs in trial seen as an examination of Croatia’s Balkan war strategy Judges in The Hague will on Friday deliver their most important verdict on Croatia’s conduct in the war against the Serbs in the 1990s, ruling after a three-year criminal trial on whether Zagreb prosecuted a policy of terror and murder to drive out the large Serbian minority. A decade after he was indicted for the “ethnic cleansing” of at least 90,000 Serbs from Croatia in 1995, Ante Gotovina, a commander in the storming of Serbian strongholds that changed the course of the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, is to learn his fate at the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The verdict is keenly awaited in the Balkans, and with great nervousness in nowhere more so than Zagreb. The influential Roman Catholic church has been calling for prayers and fasting in the hope of an acquittal. Marches and “pilgrimages” have been organised. The Croatian prime minister, Jadranka Kosor, is urging “calm and dignity” as thousands of former fighters prepare to vent their spleen if Gotovina and two former fellow ex-commanders are found guilty. Huge screens were being erected in Zagreb on Thursday night to transmit the verdict live from The Hague. While it has focused mainly on Gotovina and his two fellow accused, the trial looms larger because it has provided the main opportunity to examine the strategy and conduct of the hardline nationalist leadership of Croatia during the war. The decisive political leaders such as president Franjo Tudjman, defence minister Gojko Šušak, and army chief Janko Bobetko all died before they could face trial. The Gotovina case has served as a substitute. A former French legionnaire who returned to Croatia when the war erupted in 1991, Gotovina commanded the central operations that won the war for Croatia in August 1995, retaking the strategic town of Knin in the Dalmatian hinterland that was – the seat of a four-year-old Serbian insurgency that left Croatia crippled and partitioned. He was indicted for war crimes in 2001. Tipped off by contacts in the Croatian government, he went on the run for four years until he was arrested in a Tenerife hotel at the end of 2005. For years the Croatian government had blocked attempts to locate him until it performed a u-turn to unlock negotiations on joining the European Union. Gotovina, along with Ivan Cermak, the Knin garrison commander, and Mladen Markac, a commander of police paramilitaries, faced nine counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for overseeing the alleged deportation of tens of thousands of Serbs through murder, the torching of homes, and the shelling of civilians. The prosecution claims the trio implemented a calculated policy of expulsion ordered by the Tudjman regime aimed at permanently ridding Croatia of the large Serbian minority community that had been resident there for centuries , the prosecution contended. The defence ridiculed the argument, calling it a web of conspiracy theories, and claimed that the Serbian mass exodus was orchestrated by Serbian authorities locally and in Belgrade. For many Croats, especially those on the right, Gotovina is a national hero. Catholic bishops this week denounced the tribunal, accusing it of deliberately confusing victim and aggressor. The prime minister described the August 2005 operations as part of “a just and liberating war.”. Operation Storm, which climaxed with the reconquest of Knin and the Serbian exodus, was prosecuted at lightning speed, highly successfully with strong US backing. It represented the denouement to the four-year war. A fortnight earlier at Srebrenica in Bosnia, the Serbs had committed the worst massacre of the Yugoslav wars, murdering almost 8,000 Muslim males. Following the Croatian rout of the Serbian rebels, the war was over, Croatia’s independence secured, and Bosnia’s fragile peace pact was struck three months later. After the victory, Croatian forces went on the rampage, torching the homes of elderly Serbs who had not fled. The prosecution argued that the trio were to blame for not preventing the murder of 324 civilians, and demanded a 27-year sentence for Gotovina, 23 years for Cermak and 17 years for Markac. Croatia Serbia Europe War crimes Ian Traynor guardian.co.uk

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